Shadow and Soul
by l'amour-the-poet
Summary: Post-Legion: From now on, nothing will be real for him but this.


_**Brief Note:** __So Davis/Chloe angst, post Legion.  
I heard many people theorize that the meet up between those two would be awkward... _

_Here's my take on it, amongst the Davis character study and other things..._

* * *

He wakes up covered in blood a few blocks from his apartment. He can smell it on him, acerbic, coating every inch of his skin.  
He takes himself out of sight, before he can be seen, before someone tries to help him, before** it **can find fresh prey.

He knows it all now.  
This part of him, scrubbing vainly, unable to draw blood from invulnerable skin; is too weak to stop** it **taking him over.  
There are people suffering now, because of this. Families that will never be whole, lives that will never be the same again. It's something that can never be rectified.  
He needs to, and he doesn't know how it's possible.

He's a chain of programming meant to hide_ it _away. All his fears, his thoughts up to now, his desire to do something with his life, the love that made him. It's not real.  
He feels empty.

He can still think. He's just a purpose now. Somehow, someway, there has to be a way to end it, a way to hold it back.

He had prepared for this, even days before everything snowballed.  
There's a cabinet full of experimental treatments too risky to test, substances cooked up in labs to control creatures-none quite like **it**, untested products that would kill anyone human.

The first needle. His hands are almost steady.  
The first action where he doesn't think of himself as Davis. He's a shell with a mission.

It's the end of hope, of idyllic naïve dreams of home and family, children with green eyes, of being whole.  
From now on nothing will be real for him but this.  
He sees his same face in mirror, eyes dark and suddenly watering. And suddenly he doesn't.

* * *

He sees the ice, feels the strange smooth crystal underneath his feet. Everything, everything he'd feared up to this point, spoken analytically.  
Genetic matter, destroyer, metamorphosis… It should be something from a fanciful bit of fiction; but he knew.

And this time the words came together with Chloe's face and something else's eyes. Such familiar features, skin almost transparent, eyes shadowed- but devoid of everything that made her- only beautiful and cruel.  
She told him that he was not human. Maybe for the first time, it became impossible to deny.

He knew that somewhere there was something of Davis. With her he felt human enough to bleed.  
_You know the feelings I have for you are real._  
For a moment he allowed himself to hope. She'd be there; she'd look out at him. There would be guilt again. She'd say 'slow down', and it'd twist him into knots inside.

But there was no flicker of emotion there. The complete stillness in her face was corpse-like.  
_Feelings?_ Her face twisted into a lazy contemptuous smile that was wrong, completely wrong.  
_They were just a program I ran to get you to me._

He could have been genetic matter, a facade to hide a monster. But he was Davis. If nothing else, this was the one real part of him, the one part he got right.  
_No. _He wanted to say.  
_No. _

It was trying to take the core of him out and twist it free. It was trying to turn him into its perfect tool.  
It had to be a lie.  
Chloe didn't lie. But she was nowhere. Without her there, he could feel the words sinking in, taking hold.

_I won't…  
You have no free will._

* * *

After this, his mind weaves him in and out of blurred memories. First it's small details- Chloe's tears, a broken two-by-four… focusing and un-focusing, like a waking nightmare. He finds himself trapped within his own body, unable to move.

It's nothing like the blackouts now. There's pain, ripping though every inch of his flesh. The sensation through each cell is sharp and dull all at once-like being ripped apart.  
His eyes want to close, to stave it off, but the lids don't move. Memories of what he did as** it **flash through his mind. It's like he just clicked zoom on every single detail.

That first time he woke up in the alley. A woman, dressed in an over worn thready dress. Half painted red nails. A purse in one hand, a tiny doll in another. There was a child.

"Who is it?"  
No answer but that cracking bellow.

The sound of shoes awkwardly slapping across the sidewalk. Faster and faster. Panicked, erratic.  
A point where two walls met. The scream.

That sensation ripping through, again. A mixture of fear and blind monstrous rage. Claws raking across skin, through it. A fine mist of red.  
One memory, after another, after another...

The morning light. Standing up dazed, dozens of faces burned into his eyelids.  
The feeling of being ripped apart has mysteriously vanished, and he wants nothing more than to drive a knife straight into his heart.

* * *

He finds himself pushing an empty stretcher out through the elevator doors  
She's there: a flash of skin, healthy gold and tan, wide, open green eyes over puffy circles easily being ushered out by a nurse. A new procedure.

"Come on back in about forty-five minutes, Mrs. Olsen."  
She turns away, bites her lip wearily. She needs to know that she'd doing something.  
The open expressiveness of her face is there again, so clean and pure he's certain the construct isn't within her now.

He can still feel that strange seizing up in his chest.

He should walk away now-out those elevator doors, down to the first floor to the ambulance.  
He needs to keep her safe from this.

For the first time in four hellish days, he feels like there is still Davis somewhere in him. He hungrily drinks in the curves of her face, the slight tilt of her neck, the way she pushes extra energy in each of her steps.

It's not that he hesitates. He simply can't move.  
She's coming out of the ICU doors and she sees him.

"Davis?"  
He can't run away even as he sees every detail in his mind. Tears overflowing from her eyes, kneeling on the floor, her husband's blood staining her dress red.

She walks right up to him. Draws back. Remembering.  
There's a pain behind her face. Subtly, she looks like she could fall apart.  
_I'll always, always be here for you._  
Those are words from another time. But now especially, they brand him.

"What happened, Chloe?"  
The words burn in his mouth. It's not like he has a right to ask.

He expects one of her only false smiles, a remark about about unstable foundations and a collapsing farmhouse.  
He doesn't get it.

Instead she almost, almost pulls him by the sleeve.

"Come with me."

And he hears every word from her lips, about that thing inside her taking control, razing through the Planet… about how her hands killed someone…

And when he tells her he's sorry he means it. He deserves this.  
Never her.

She puts her head in her hands for a few seconds. Looks right back up at him.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I couldn't…"

"Hey. It's fine."  
She unsuccessfully attempts to chuckle.

"Now that I'm done being the angst Queen, what about you?"

Everything starts to build at the back of his throat, but this time, he can't force it out.  
She's everything, again. No matter how compassionate she is, no matter how pure, perhaps because of it…  
He fears nothing more than the sight of hate in her eyes.

"Nothing much." He tells her. "Just some days… everything's choking, you know."

"Yeah. I know."

Those last ten minutes are all the time he will have. But he's ever conscious of the new lines between them. Before, he might have patted her hand, tried to comfort her. It's not right, now. She's somebody else's Mrs. now.  
He has had few experiences of marriages from his childhood. Most were temporary, cobbled together things that got undone with broken china and lies and rages.

But he knows that for Chloe, it will be something more than that. She'll throw her soul into it, let it bruise her, send her into solace and she'll never give up.

He thinks she can still see it in the way he looks at her. But from his end, there are no more words about his feelings, no more words about connection, no more protestations of hopeless love…  
She doesn't need any more pain.

He still can't force out the words that he came to say goodbye.

The ten minutes are up, and the only signs of its passing are two cups of cold coffee on the table, convenient excuses for stolen moments.

She's needed. She turns to go.

"Davis? Since, I'll be here and you will be around…" She lowers her yes, looks at once brave and guilty.  
"Will I see you again?" She asks.

He wonders which part of him urges his body to move, his head to nod. For a moment, the ghost of a smile lingers on her face and its all worth it.

* * *

Nothing is going to happen, he thinks. They'll sit here mornings. Talk easily for however long they have.  
He'll wait. He'll feel incomplete at the end of it all.

But for now, the little corner of him has come alive again. The Davis in him aches, but it lives.  
He thinks that maybe, the words won't rip him apart now.  
_... just a program I ran to get you to me._

The programming was meant to allow him to be manipulated. But, somewhere along the way, those feelings morphed into something that couldn't be controlled. Now he doesn't know where the feelings end and Davis begins, and maybe it doesn't matter.

He _feels. _  
He can love her. And he'll embrace that in the secret parts of his soul for as long as he exists.  
It'll make him real.

He'll live as a man for ten minutes of his day. He'll save every person he can as a paramedic. He'll go home and live a nightmare.  
He may not have been meant to be human, but he is.

This is his free will.

* * *

_****__**Endnote t**_o Un-confuse:   
_My theorizing on the effects of Davis's methods of holding Doomsday back are based on an interviw Sam gave a while back. He said the way to deal with it was horrible for Davis._

_Considering Davis as a character, I don't think there can be anything worse for Davis than reliving a starring role as the villain in his own personal horror movie over and over._

_And the description of the pain is based on comic! Doomsday. (The agony he's in makes him into what he is.)_

_**If you review, I will love it even more than readers like updates. ;) **_


End file.
